Pages tagged "Fair voting/proportional representation"

Cambridge, Massachusetts will elect a new City Council and School Committee on Tuesday through one of the nation's only ranked choice multi-seat electoral systems. The system has unique advantages that lead to fairer and more representative outcomes for the city's voters.

The United States Congress has careened into a government shutdown, and everybody wants to find someone to blame. But in the accusatory frenzy, they're missing the real culprit: the voting rules that drive the political behavior of Congress.

Ballot data from November's Cambridge City Council election can be used to simulate a vote using block voting, the most common method for the election of city councils in the United States. The results illustrate the value of the Cambridge system for ensuring fair representation of political and ethnic minority groups.

Voters in Cambridge, Massachusetts elected a new city government earlier this month, using ranked choice voting in multi-member districts as they have in every municipal election since 1941. This year's contest provides another illustration of the advantages of this system, including fair representation of minorities, reduced negative campaigning, and greater voter satisfaction.

While many Americans describe themselves as ideological moderates, centrists have become increasingly rare in the House of Representatives, where their decline has contributed to congressional dysfunction and polarization. The pace of the decline of House moderates over the last forty years has been remarkable.